Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

General Motors provided flights from San Francisco to Detroit and back, plus a night in a hotel, so we could visit the GM design center. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

After years of insisting that truck buyers are demanding larger and larger vehicles, automakers have seen the light and understand that many people want smaller, more efficient pickups. Maybe.

Hot on the heels of the explosive sales of the Ford Maverick and the relatively good sales of the Hyundai Santa Cruz, GM seems to have caught “small trucks with efficient powertrains” fever. Well, at least the designers have come down with that rare—and hopefully incurable—condition.

During a tour of GM’s design center in Warren, Michigan, the automaker gave Ars Technica a peek into its thoughts about future EVs.

Enlarge / Ram is the last of the Detroit three to show off a fully electric pickup truck. (credit: Ram)

On Thursday Ram revealed a concept of its first fully electric pickup truck at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Ram is the last of the Detroit Three to show off a full-size EV pickup— Ford's F-150 Lightning went on sale in 2022 , and Chevrolet displayed the Silverado EV at CES last year . But the production Chevy EV is only due in 2024, the same year that the Ram 1500 BEV goes on sale.

"The Ram 1500 Revolution BEV Concept is our clearest signal yet that we're on the precipice of something extraordinary at Ram and points directly to where we’re going on our electrified journey. At Ram, we’ve redefined what pickup trucks can be and will do so again by pushing past what competitors are offering by delivering the best electric pickups on the market," said Ram CEO Mike Koval Jr.

Ram's design team has gone for a quite modern look for the Ram 1500 Revolution BEV, some of which—like the pillarless "suicide doors"—might not make it to the production version in a couple years' time. Other features and details should survive, though, like the powered frunk, tailgate, and rear step with active diffuser. The concept also sports side-view cameras instead of reflective mirrors—unless I'm mistaken, we'd need a change of regulations for those to become road-legal in the US.